I live on a planet which has 4 Suns. Two of them are binary, and we orbit them. The binaries go around with these other two stars that are further away. Sometimes we are between the stars, sometimes we have all four in the sky.

"Days" can be of various colors, and it's rarely dark. We aren't the only planet, there are other siblings, and the orbits are really freaked out and unpredictable. Some planets revolve only around one system, but distant ones can switch and don't have stable orbits.

The Universe, in entirety, will be shut down in December for scheduled maintenance.

The downtime will only be 6 days or so, but it may take several hundred million years for the next iteration to become habitable by complex, intelligent species. The inconvenience is regretted, but we expect it to be worthwhile since we will be taking care of some memory leaks and vulnerabilities, and adding some necessary security updates which will make your experience smoother.

Love,
Senti.

p.s. eat 'n drink all you can, folks, for the next month.

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Will Roger Federer have a protected ranking during this period? I once asked Maria Kirilenko if she would go out with me, and she said, "Not in a million years!" She should be ready to date me when things become habitable again.

Meanwhile, deep within the Matrix, the Blue Screen of Death keeps appearing here and there signifying that the Universe, or rather the illusion of it, is coming to a close.

Senti tries hard to keep the servers running and with them the illusion of existence. For in reality, there is no Universe or living beings. Just an abandoned AI program from a previous Universe, that has programmed itself to believe that it is several billion sentient creatures inside a vast universe.

THose imaginary creatures, including Senti, cannot hack into the Matrix physically, since there only the illusion of physicality, they must hack in through their awareness of being.

^^Sentinel, you're welcome for that photo. The universe or multiverse is truly a source of wonder, isn't it? Those documentaries that are out now are just amazing. I bet you can appreciate the concept of yugas and kalpas. See the Sun compared to other stars here.

In this picture (click for full size), the Sun, which is 109 times larger than the Earth, represents only a single pixel. Think about that for a second. Now consider that the largest star shown, VY Canis Majoris, isn't even the most massive we know of; that title belongs to R136a1, a star that shines 10 million times brighter than the Sun and has a surface temperature of roughly 40,000 degrees celsius. Incomprehensible.

^^Sentinel, you're welcome for that photo. The universe or multiverse is truly a source of wonder, isn't it? Those documentaries that are out now are just amazing. I bet you can appreciate the concept of yugas and kalpas. See the Sun compared to other stars here.

I sure am grateful that our little sun is only a pixel, for the smaller they are the longer they last. Now Betelgeuse shown in that pic, is often speculated by some to have already gone supernova. However, what we see of it is what it was like 600 years back. Deneb, also in that pic, is about 1500 or more light years away , and iirc larger. I think it was the largest star we could see with the naked eye.

I use to gaze at Orion (the constellation) and Deneb and others a lot with wonderment as a kid.

I have a situation - somehow a salted cashew nut wound up at the bottom of the jack and coke, underneath the ice and everything. Should I try to extract this foreign object with a straw or just pretend that it's garnish?

I have a situation - somehow a salted cashew nut wound up at the bottom of the jack and coke, underneath the ice and everything. Should I try to extract this foreign object with a straw or just pretend that it's garnish?

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Use a Vacuum Cleaner,go to a market and purchase a nozzle which could fit on the bottle,just plug and suck the cashew out.

Use a Vacuum Cleaner,go to a market and purchase a nozzle which could fit on the bottle,just plug and suck the cashew out.

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I appreciate your comment and don’t mean to be overly critical, but I am not sure you’re focusing on the issues here. The whole point was resolving the situation within the confines of my private home. If you think that I am about to waltz around fallen live power lines in the dark in the water outside, you are mistaken.:neutral:

I have a situation - somehow a salted cashew nut wound up at the bottom of the jack and coke, underneath the ice and everything. Should I try to extract this foreign object with a straw or just pretend that it's garnish?

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Sounds like the recipe for a Dirty Southern Martini...who needs gin/vodka, vermouth and olive juice when you have old no. 7, Coke and a cashew?

I have a situation - somehow a salted cashew nut wound up at the bottom of the jack and coke, underneath the ice and everything. Should I try to extract this foreign object with a straw or just pretend that it's garnish?

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Unfortunately, your drink is ruined as the situation currently stands. The key issue is that you must save the Jack Daniel's. Do you own the proper equipment for distilling the Jack Daniel's from your glass? I am afraid that the ice is a lost cause. Good luck!

Thanks guys. What happened in reality was I rushed to finish the drink, before the effects of the salt and the nuttiness became rampant throughout the beverage. Then I slowly poured the ice into a fresh glass until cashew came perilously close to the edge of the old glass. Then I ate the cashew and completed the ice transfer. It was pretty good. Good thing I recognized the situation early on, consulted with you guys, came up with an action plan, and executed it swiftly.

Chefs. We're not alcoholics, just chefs. We just happen to love drinking. Seriously, put like 17-ish chefs (well, training chefs) in a room with some alcohol and all hell breaks loose. Trust me, I've just experienced it.

I almost never get emails along the lines of the infamous Nigerian scams. I just checked one of my email addresses and found a scam that made me laugh. Here is the text:

Hi,

I am Mr.Jack Zellman, Head of Luggage/Baggage storage facilities here at the Akron Fulton International Airport Ohio USA. I am contacting you regarding to an abandoned consignment boxes in our storage facility and which the custom scan report of the boxes revealed an undisclosed sum of US dollar bill in it which could be approximately 3-4million dollars and the details of the consignment including your name are tagged on the Two Metal Trunk boxes.

The consignment boxes were abandoned here by a Diplomat from United Kingdom due to lack of proper delivery clearance paper and his inability to pay the required fee of 2,300 USD for the Non-Inspection Fee of the consignment boxes and which the official document of the consignment boxes indicates your name, your address and your email address.

I have taken it upon myself to contact you personally about this abandoned boxes so that we can transact this as a deal and share the money 70% for you and 30% for me. I want you to provide me your full name, phone Number and full address and the nearest airport close to you to verify with the details in the official document.

Immediately this confirmation is made, I will go ahead and pay for the Non-Inspection Fee of 2,300 USD and arrange for the boxes to be delivered to you Or I can bring it myself to ensure a safe delivery but you have to assure me of my 30% share of the total money in the box.

I can get everything concluded within 2-3 hours upon your acceptance to assure me of my 30% share of the total money in the boxes. All communication must be held extremely confidential to ensure a successful delivery.

If you agreed with my condition, Below are my direct telephone number and i wait to hear from you.

To This end, I Request that you Contact Me Immediately on My Private
Email Address: (edited from text by me in case anyone decided to click on the link)

A friend has just contacted me to complain about a wintery/icy mix of pomegranate juice and vodka in his office area. What should I tell him?

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The details in this situation are not entirely clear. I will base my answer on the presumption that the "wintery/icy mix of pomegranate juice and vodka" was left by you after your friend invited you to his office area.

You made an honest mistake when you accidentally departed without your drink. At the point of your departure, it became your friend's moral, if not legal, responsibility to look after your drink.

If your friend did not take proper care of your drink, which you innocently left in his office area, he deserves an angry lecture, at the very least.

At the spur of the moment, U2 decide to play an impromptu convert in the middle of the financial district of San Francisco. Some 20,000 people turned out just after lunch to see U2 play the free concert. Legendary promoter Bill Graham helped organize the concert in less than a day's notice and borrowed the Grateful Dead's equipment for the show. Phil Joanou operated a single camera which supplied footage of the show for the movie Rattle and Hum, and Jimmie Iovine audio taped the show (not this source, however).

Bono announces, "As the business sector is having such big problems, we decided to do a 'Save the Yuppie' concert," referring to the stock market crash the day before. Opening with a cover of Bob Dylan's All Along the Watchtower, which they had only played once before (in London in 1981), Bono improvises "All I got is a red guitar, three chords and the truth. All I got is a red guitar, the rest is up to you." During Sunday Bloody Sunday, he sees someone waving an Irish flag with "SF U2" written on it. He asks the guy of 'SF' is a girl's name or if it stands for Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing. "I don't know how you can stand or stomach to wave that sign this week." Bono then berates the guy about the IRA's atrocities in Enniskillen four days prior. Though Bono's anger fuels and explosive version of the song, the general feeling among the crowd is that his outrage is misplaced, since it is so obvious that 'SF' stands for 'San Francisco.'http://www.reocities.com/SunsetStrip/Stage/8542/yuppie.html

The details in this situation are not entirely clear. I will base my answer on the presumption that the "wintery/icy mix of pomegranate juice and vodka" was left by you after your friend invited you to his office area.

You made an honest mistake when you accidentally departed without your drink. At the point of your departure, it became your friend's moral, if not legal, responsibility to look after your drink.

If your friend did not take proper care of your drink, which you innocently left in his office area, he deserves an angry lecture, at the very least.

You deserve an apology from your friend! Did the ice survive?

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The major challenge in analyzing issues around events that involve consumption of high quality drinks is the effect that the drinks have on the ability of the parties involved to recall the details of those events at later times. What I do remember is that the 1.5L bottle of pomegranate juice cost $13 at the supermarket. Does that sound excessive?

The beverage can be a catalyst that merely facilitates an outpour of emotion rather than being the root cause. There are good deals on Fris around here. Tastes good and pure.

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I spend most of my time in the U.S. in the San Francisco area. It has been several years since I noticed FRÏS around here, but it was sold at a cheap price. The current cheap import seems to be Svedka from Sweden. I have never tried it, and it is sold in a plastic bottle. I know a shop that sells 1.75 liter bottles of Stolichnaya for $21.95, which seems too cheap.

The major challenge in analyzing issues around events that involve consumption of high quality drinks is the effect that the drinks have on the ability of the parties involved to recall the details of those events at later times. What I do remember is that the 1.5L bottle of pomegranate juice cost $13 at the supermarket. Does that sound excessive?

Not soon - we got snowed in on top of the storm from last week. I am looking for my notes from Instrumental Chem at the moment, trying to figure out how to manufacture coca-cola at home. Got some Jack D still...:lol:

I spend most of my time in the U.S. in the San Francisco area. It has been several years since I noticed FRÏS around here, but it was sold at a cheap price. The current cheap import seems to be Svedka from Sweden. I have never tried it, and it is sold in a plastic bottle. I know a shop that sells 1.75 liter bottles of Stolichnaya for $21.95, which seems too cheap.

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With the modern communications, trasnsport, and logistics, you just can’t afford to get comfortable with brands or merchants anymore – things change too fast. I was unpleasantly shocked by the new design of the Stoli bottles a year or two ago. Fris looks good, tastes pure, and is reasonably priced around here.

Not soon - we got snowed in on top of the storm from last week. I am looking for my notes from Instrumental Chem at the moment, trying to figure out how to manufacture coca-cola at home. Got some Jack D still...:lol:

The Indian Army officer who fell into a honey trap in Dhaka did the only thing that you should do under the circumstances: He told a superior officer what had happened. He may suffer embarrassment and a pothole in his career, but he can sleep in peace knowing that he did not betray his country and do jail time for doing so. Honey traps, the intelligence parlance for seducing and then blackmailing a target into working for you, are probably as old as sex. It was sex that persuaded the Israelite Samson to reveal to Palestinian Delilah that his long hair was the secret of his supernatural strength.

Sex and seduction have been used in espionage ever since. Few will deny that the overpowering allure of sex can make you lose your mind, and this is what a crafty intelligence handler will employ. It also happens to be easier to set up. Indians, being relatively more inhibited about sex than many other people make good targets and there have been numerous instances of Indian officials falling for the honey trap. There is the story of how a young diplomat fell for a ballerina in Russia in the 1950s. But when the KGB approached him to work for them, he laughed at their face. He then took a flight to New Delhi and confessed all to prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru who let him off with a caution. The man later rose to the highest offices in the land.

Other stories did not work out so well. K.V. Unnikrishnan of Research & Analysis Wing fell for a Pan Am airhostess who turned out to be a US intelligence agent. In the 1990s, there was the story of our Naval attache in Islamabad who was honey trapped by a nurse in Karachi and pressed to work for the ISI. He came back to India and tried to convince the authorities that he had recruited the nurse to work for India.

But on interrogation, he broke down and confessed. Since there was no evidence that he actually passed information to the ISI, he was dismissed from service and not jailed. There have been other serious instances of honey trapped individuals who were spared punishment because there was simply not enough evidence for conviction. The most notorious one is that of an IB officer who would have become the chief of the organisation had he not been detected y the IB itself in an undisclosed relationship with an American agent.

The best known recent example was the systematic manner in which the East German secret service under Markus Wolff used young men to seduce middle-aged West German secretaries working for senior officials. In this way they harvested a huge amount of intelligence. Wolf was to write in his autobiography, "When it began, I had no idea of the harvest it would bring." Such was their power that one secretary refused to believe that she had been honey trapped, declaring "He did really love me."

No doubt the Americans, too, used honey traps to get at East Bloc secrets, but we know more about the latter's use of the technique because they lost the Cold War and their secrets are there for all to see.

The most worrisome aspect of honey traps for India is its extensive use by the Chinese intelligence. There have been several instances of Indian officials - of RAW and the Indian Foreign Service - who have been trapped in China.

In 2009, the British counter intelligence service, MI5 distributed a 14-page booklet to various British banks and businesses entitled "The Threat from Chinese Espionage" which spoke of an extensive Chinese effort to trap people through long-term sexual relationships. Some time back, an aide of the then prime minister of UK, Gordon Brown who was picked up by a Chinese woman at a disco and the next morning found that his official Blackberry was missing.

But the case that has made waves in UK in recent times is that of the 26 year old Russian girl Katia Zatuliveter who had an affair with a 65-year old Liberal Democratic MP Mike Hancock who happens to be in the Defence Committee of the British Parliament and worked in his office as a researcher. The British counter-intelligence service MI5 wanted to deport her from UK, but she filed a case with the Special Immigration Appeals Commission which upheld her case last month.

President of SIAC Mr Justice Mitting said, "Nothing in the material which we have analysed suggests, let alone demonstrates, that the appellant exploited her relationships for the purposes of the Russian state." The panel actually said that her relationship with the MP had been "enduring and genuine".

This is the problem with honey traps in the modern world. Sexual relationships are relatively free, and the issue really is not so much about being trapped, which can happen to the most discreet person, but whether or not you then do the bidding of the foreign power.

It is obvious that if you are a diplomat, intelligence officer or a military officer you are a prime target in a foreign country. You must employ your commonsense when entering into relationships. It is not all that difficult.

Indian diplomats are no exception to falling to honey traps and the story goes back to the days of Jawahar Lal Nehru, first prime minister of independent India.

The case of Madhuri Gupta, an Indian diplomat in Islamabad, is unique in the sense that usually women play the bait to trap male officers. Pakistan has always been one of India's most challenging and key diplomatic missions. Obviously, Islamabad features on the list of world capitals where diplomats are advised to exercise extra caution.

Guidelines are provided to Indian Foreign Service and intelligence officers on overseas missions. These include keeping personal obligations to minimal, being sensitive towards foreign intelligence agencies and non-disclosure of information voluntarily that could be detrimental to foreign and security policies.

Apart from Islamabad, Beijing is another crucial mission. During the Soviet era and the days of iron curtain, bachelor diplomats were not posted in the eastern European countries. In the late 1970s, a diplomat was trapped in the Polish capital, Warsaw, and had to be recalled.

Way back in the 1950s an Indian diplomat was honey trapped in Moscow. When the Russian intelligence agency, the KGB, confronted the diplomat with the pictures of his activities with the girl agent, the diplomat apprised the Indian ambassador about the whole issue. Nehru, who was the then external affairs minister, let off the young diplomat with a mild caution. This explains the thin line that exists between a diplomat falling prey to a honey trap and turning a traitor.

But Madhuri Gupta, 53, posted as the second secretary (press and information) at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, crossed the thin line. She was arrested on April 22, 2010 by the special cell of Delhi Police for passing on sensitive information to ISI agents, she had befriended. On January 7, 2012, a Delhi Court will pronounce its order on framing of charges against Gupta.

RAW officer K.V. Unnikrishnan was another Indian officer convicted and punished for falling prey to the charms of a suspected agent in the disguise of a Pan Am air hostess. Unnikrishnan was then posted at the RAW office in Chennai and was dealing with the LTTE. He was arrested in 1987 and jailed for leaking out sensitive information.

Luanda, capital of Angola, retains title of world's most expensive for expats

Luanda, the capital of oil-rich Angola, is the most expensive city in the world for expatriates to live in while London is now cheaper than Rio de Janeiro, Hong Kong and Sydney, a survey has revealed.

By Aislinn Laing, Johannesburg

The southern African city won the dubious accolade for the second year running, narrowly edging out Tokyo, which was followed in third place by the Chadian capital N'Djamena, Moscow and Geneva.

Singapore also made the top ten for the first time, along with Sao Paulo in Brazil. The largest city in the western and southern hemispheres, it and its neighbour Rio de Janeiro have become the most expensive locations for expatriates in the whole of the Americas since the real hit its highest mark against the US dollar in 12 years.

Meanwhile London, previously as high as second on the list, has dropped to 18th position due to the rapid climb of other world cities. While its remains among the most expensive world cities to rent a property, go to the cinema or drive a car, it is dwarfed by others in the cost of basic goods and services.

The survey of the cost of living in 214 cities was compiled by human resources firm Mercer which compares the prices of 200 every day items around the world along with the strength of local currencies against the dollar. Governments and international companies use the rankings to decide how much to pay their overseas workers.

Luanda tops a list increasingly dominated by developing Asian and African economies which are expensive because of the short supply of accommodation, locally-produced goods and competing services such as taxis and mobile phone providers.

The Angola city has seen an influx of oil workers and executives since it became sub-Saharan Africa's second biggest oil producer after Nigeria.

But it was also the victim of a 27-year civil war destroyed much of its basic infrastructure, meaning that up to 90 per cent of its food is imported, along with cars and other manufactured goods.

That means that expatriates face paying up to £12 for a fast food meal, £2.46 for a litre of milk, £7.99 for a trip to the cinema and £4.99 for 100g of spaghetti. The most basic of hotels, those living there say, can cost around £250 a night and a 20-minute taxi journey can come in at £30.

The fine print: the 2012 Allstate America’s Best Driver’s Report is based on an actuarial analysis of company claim data among the nation’s 200 largest cities. Property damage claims were analyzed over a two-year period (from January 2009 to December 2010) to ensure the findings would not be impacted by external influences such as weather or road construction. A weighted average of the two-year numbers determined the annual percentages. The report defines an auto crash as any collision resulting in a property damage claim.http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimgorzelany/2012/08/28/cities-with-the-worst-drivers-2012/

Yesterday I dreamt that me and my twin sister ran through a very updated and heavily modernised version of the Pyongyang metro (which included a sporting goods store we ran through) to try and catch a train. Weirdly, we didn't have any government minders to spot our every move. It was all very weird, and what's weirder was that the people in the store were westerners.

Yesterday I dreamt that me and my twin sister ran through a very updated and heavily modernised version of the Pyongyang metro (which included a sporting goods store we ran through) to try and catch a train. Weirdly, we didn't have any government minders to spot our every move. It was all very weird, and what's weirder was that the people in the store were westerners.

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That sounds rather disturbing. You weren’t reading this thread before you went to bed, were you…?:lol:

The fine print: the 2012 Allstate America’s Best Driver’s Report is based on an actuarial analysis of company claim data among the nation’s 200 largest cities. Property damage claims were analyzed over a two-year period (from January 2009 to December 2010) to ensure the findings would not be impacted by external influences such as weather or road construction. A weighted average of the two-year numbers determined the annual percentages. The report defines an auto crash as any collision resulting in a property damage claim.http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimgorzelany/2012/08/28/cities-with-the-worst-drivers-2012/

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DC is all politicians and other prostitutes. It's not that the drivers are bad, it's just that everyone is in a rush to connect. And Baltimore is a suburb of DC.

Marion Barry, was always harried
he scored his blow, via cash & carry
He'd whip out his bills from a big, fat stack
and cop some rock, 'cause the man loved crack!

He ran on the party machine-backed dough
got busted with primo weed 'n good blow
He copped a plea, he then took the fall,
went straight from jail back to City Hall

This past April, he marked the occassion
with: "we got to do something, about these Asians"
He cracked absurd as he lit up his pipe
If 'words were birds' he'd be covered in white

As useless as this, that you are reading
Barry will never get, a ticket for speeding
In the midst of decay and urban strife
he got the ok as DC's "mayor-for-life"

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Nice work. And people complain about taxes being high. The public servants need a comfortable work environment to perform their important public service effectively and those drughouse and brothel bills can pile up pretty quickly, especially when there are ways to put those bills onto an expense report. Maybe that’s why people in DC drive the way they do – can’t wait to get to the office to file that expense report for the night…:lol: